MMOs and game design

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Posing around in WoW

So this week I finally got exalted reputation with my guild. I still don’t quite get the entire idea behind earning reputation with a guild I was practically a founder member of via quests and instances, surely I should just be able to get rep from the guild officers/ GM.

In any case, WoW being what it is, far too few people actually complain about this and I suspect many prefer the idea that they can earn guild rep via quests and achievements without having to actually talk to anyone. Anyhow, exalted rep let me buy a dark phoenix mount, which will mean something completely different to anyone who ever read/ watched the X-Men.

The eligibility criteria are being exalted with a guild that has achieved guild kills (ie. in a raid group made up mostly of guild members) of the T11 end bosses. So it shows that your guild are capable of talking to each other at least enough for some raiding success. I think the rest of my guild should be justly proud, I wasn’t actually there for either of the kills myself.

And these are some moody shots of Spinks, which shows that if nothing else, being able to fly around Azeroth is good for setting up some pictures. Anyone care to guess where these were taken?

The function of guild rep is actually pretty strict and tied in with guild rewards. It’s got two mechanical functions – one is a gate such that you have to spend time playing in a guild in order to access the rewards, and the other is a similar gate for guilds bringing in members to trigger the “Stay Classy” achievement.

It’s a necessary mechanic to in order to maintain the rewards for doing stuff as a guild. If that sounds like nannying by Blizzard, bear in mind what the game would look like at this point if you could just join a guild, grab the goodies and /gquit. At this point in the cycle it would be far easier to cheese it like that than actually earn the rewards for the guild itself. If Guild Masters could grant rep, you’d have raid guilds in /trade offering temporary exalted access in exchange for gold.

It is weird for everyone, even the founders, to have to earn “rep” from scratch, but if one could game the system like that, then you might as well just stick the rewards on a regular vendor.